Spherical Indentation Creep Following Ramp Loading

Elastic-viscoelastic correspondence, utilizing Boltzmann integral operators, was used to generate displacement–time solutions for spherical indentation testing of viscoelastic materials. Solutions were found for creep following loading at a constant loading rate and compared with step-loading solutions. Experimental creep tests were performed with different loading rate–peak load level combinations on glassy and rubbery polymeric materials. The experimental data were fit to the spherical indentation ramp–creep solutions to obtain values of shear modulus and time-constants; good agreement was found between the experimental results and known modulus values. A multiple ramp-and-hold protocol was examined for the measurement of creep responses at several loads (and depths) within the same test. Emphasis is given to the use of multiple experiments (or multiple levels within a single experiment) to test a priori assumptions made in the correspondence solutions regarding linear viscoelastic material behavior and the creep function.